There is a regret that has power to move and torment the coldest Stoic that vegetates on earth; it comes when our own hand or act has slain the one living thing that loved us best of all. We may have done the deed unwittingly or unwillingly; we may have been unconscious of the love that was borne us till it was too late for acknowledgment; we may never in thought or word or act have injured our victim before that last wrong of the death-blow; well for those who can plead so fair an excuse; yet even this, with all the rest, the inexorable Nemesis laughs to scorn. I wonder that poets and dramatists have not oftener selected this saddest theme. It may be true that the last murmur from the lips of the Llewellyn, when his life was ebbing away in the Pass of the Ambush, syllabled the name, not of wife or child or friend, but of a stanch wolfhound; and perhaps tears less bitter have been shed over the graves of many exemplary Christians than those that sprinkled the turf under the birch-trees where Gelert was sleeping. It could not free the Ancient Mariner from the remorse that clung to him like a poisoned garment till it made him a "world's wonder," because, when he shot the albatross, he thought he was benefiting his fellows. Not less accusingly did the voices of the sea wail in the ears of the desolate Viking, because, when the bitter arrow went aside, he was fighting hard to save Oriana. Nothing could be more correct than the conduct of Virginius, or more creditable to a Roman father; but when he harangued in the Forum in after days, I doubt if the commons thronged so densely as to shut out from the demagogue a vision of fair hair dabbled in blood, gleaming awfully in the sunlight, and of dark-blue eyes turned upon him in a wondering horror till that look froze in them forevermore. I doubt if the cheers of his partisans were so noisy as to drown the memory of a certain choked shivering moan; in the long, lonely winter nights at least, be sure those sights and sounds visited the tribune's hearth, often enough to satisfy the savage spirit of the doomed decemvir.